


The Silver Edge of Ancient Truth

by the_rck



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Disguise, Gen, Pre-Canon, tarot reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28179663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: "I could guess," I admitted, "and I could tell you my guesses. Being right for me wouldn't mean I was right for you.""There's no way this ends well.""If there's no way at all," I said tartly, "then I'm wasting my time. I might as well see what happens if I shred all of my Shadows myself. I'm not enthusiastic about anything in that direction."He almost smiled.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Writing Rainbow Silver





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wyvernwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernwood/gifts).



> Title from Walter S. Percy's poem, "The Old Moon in the Arms of the New."
> 
> Chapter 2 is image heavy. All story elements are in chapter 1.
> 
> I did the reading with the Sacred Rose tarot deck. All images are from that. The layout is the reflected Celtic cross.

I see no reason for Corwin ever to know. Random probably guesses, but Random always came to me by choice. His process was slower, easier, and it led him to Vialle and to a throne he understood as a burden. I think he considers the throne a small price to pay for being worthy of Vialle's love.

Of my brothers, Random was the one who had harvested the least bitterness in Amber, so perhaps it was easier for him to let go of it. Perhaps.

At any rate, I could have let Corwin go. I didn't care much about him or about Eric, not then. They were lesser powers than our father or than my mother, and because I was a sister rather than a brother, they were courteous, gallant even. Apart from Random, all of my brothers were.

No, not entirely true. Benedict was wary of me because he had known my mother before Oberon met her. I didn't notice it as much as I should have because Benedict was wary of all of us and because his wariness didn't look like mine.

The court of Amber was dazzling. Poets, painters, jewelers, dancing partners, all of them offered me as much as those back home offered my mother. Since I was still a daughter in Amber, I took that as Amber being richer than my home was.

It took me a very long time to understand that my mother was less greedy than Oberon and that my mother judged as much by sincerity of devotion as by show. Better a terrible painting made with all the artist could give.

Look at the Christian Bible some time. Look at the story of the widow's mite.

Don't be foolish. Of course, my mother was a god. What else could she have been?

So was Oberon. So are all of the children of the Pattern. If Oberon hadn't been a god, he'd have died as so many of her lovers did, bleeding out for her pleasure.

I never said she was a kindly god. There's a reason I walked the Pattern and a reason you will never meet her or her sisters as anything but the vaguest rumbles of the earth, ripples in the waters, and echoes on the wind. She would have liked you, so pretty and naive with blood of fire.

You'd have taken a long time to die.

Don't worry. I don't do that. I don't need to, and it's not nearly as much fun as it sounds like.

Not that I wouldn't go there if you try to fuck me over. We both know I would, but we wouldn't be having this talk if I thought I'd have to.

Going back to Corwin, I don't think he knew he'd crossed into Shadows I own. Members of the family do, from time to time, and I don't fuss over it as long as they put everything back where they found it. Change the sheets. Wash the dishes. Restock the pantry. Whatever metaphor works.

Corwin strolled in and found a form of poetry he'd never tried before. That was fine. He collected that sort of thing. His mastery of words was a thing he chose. Possibly the only thing he both chose and was allowed to keep.

Oberon hated surprises.

Of course your father loved our father. What choice did he have? Oberon could find him anywhere, and the next most powerful person Corwin knew was Benedict who was not then as powerful as he is now and who--

Benedict can be as cruel as any of the rest of us, and he had many reasons to loathe Faiella and her sons. Benedict outlived his older brothers by avoiding every political trap in his path. Affection for Corwin would have been a lethal snare.

At any rate, Corwin argued metaphors and meter with Ariosto. I believe Corwin also fought a duel with some would-be gallant over the exact color of Isabella d'Este's eyes.

At first, I ignored his presence, but something about it nagged at me. I was still very new to ruling the heart of my Shadows, so I hadn't quite learned to recognize warnings from the soil beneath my feet. I only realized that I needed to take action when his nose bled after he tried to stiff a whore.

I was two Shadows away, and I could taste Corwin on the wind. The remnants of the Old Gods feared what he could become. There was the death-- and the life-- of universes in him.

So I donned the form of a crone and went to him.

Brand might have seen me through that, and Benedict certainly would have. Random already knew me in that aspect. But Corwin?

He offered me his place by the fire with a careless courtesy because it cost him nothing. He made sure I had a meal which also cost him nothing. He called me 'grandmother' and thought it a good joke because the Crown Prince of Amber had centuries on any withered, old woman in some random Shadow.

As thanks, I offered to read his fortune in a deck of cards.

He wasn't entirely a fool. He hesitated. He felt for the Pattern and couldn't find it. Then he shrugged and sat beside me. "Curious designs," he said as if it didn't matter at all.

The deck I used wasn't Trump, but I think he felt that it had power. He may even have recognized that some of it came from Tir, not from the Pattern there but from the possibilities that surround it. 

I suspect that Tir is where the Pattern most closely touches Chaos. You might find the place of interest.

I gave him a cackle that would have pleased any wicked witch. I pulled out one card, the one I'd designed with him in mind, then set the rest of the deck in front of him. "Shuffle," I ordered. "Think of the things that matter most to you."

He shuffled.

I'm not sure he did the rest of it. He might have just to see if he could get anything out of it; he might not have because he dislikes taking orders.

I pulled the table where we sat a little deeper into my mother's empty husk.

His eyes widened just enough that I knew he'd noticed. Possibly, if I hadn't known him, I wouldn't have read his reaction. Possibly.

"Tap on the deck," I instructed. "Then cut it into three piles, moving left to right."

He hesitated again. He tried to draw on the Pattern again, but he was in my realm. Then he nodded and tapped the deck.

I picked up the piles he'd created, also going left to right. Then I laid down the card I'd held back. "This is you," I informed him.

He leaned in to read the caption and to study the image. "The Four of Swords." He straightened and went very still. "The colors are wrong," he told me.

"Are they? A crescent moon doesn't give much light, and--" I shrugged and pulled us deeper still. "--you can call it an artistic choice. Silver paint is prone to chipping."

"I only have one sword," he said.

"There are four. You only have one, but there are still four. Not everything is about you."

"I would prefer to stop," he said.

"You might destroy universes."

"If I want to." His expression didn't tell me whether or not he expected to. He was enough Oberon's son not to find the idea appalling.

"We both need to understand why."

He definitely didn't like that; I could see it in the set of his jaw and the angles of his shoulders.

"All I ask is that you listen to my words and study the cards." I have no idea if he understood that there might be things I wouldn't ask about, things I might insist on or force.

"So that's me." He shrugged. "Is wine an option as part of this?"

"If you wish." I take a tithe of the best of each year, so I drew on that, and a bottle appeared on the table. "I think you'll appreciate this vintage."

He cracked the seal and poured. He didn't offer me any.

I'm still not sure if he meant it as an insult or if he assumed that, if I wanted a drink, I would select a beverage of my own. I gave him several seconds to sample the wine. Then I laid a second card over the first and crossed it with a third.

"Those are... alarming," he commented.

The covering card was the Three of Swords reversed, a heart pierced by swords and bleeding. The crossing card was the Seven of the same suit, four extended arms brandishing swords and a man, seated and wearing robs of purple, held up a hand that might have been warding or might have been puppeting the three swords floating nearby.

"A matter of interpretation." I shrugged. "I never promised you comfort." I laid out four more cards. The Ten of Wands, a man lying on his back with wooden cudgels looming over him, was below him. The Eight of Cups, a long haired figure in green, was behind him. The Page of Wands, a figure with a staff in the right hand and a rose in the left, was above him. The Eight of Pentacles, a gardener hard at work, was ahead of him.

"I am not encouraged," he said.

I could hear dark humor in his voice, so I smiled and let myself look a little bit younger. "Would you like me to interpret this part first or finish laying everything out?"

"Will it change anything?"

"Unlikely. I can't promise you will like the rest better. You might. You might not. If I already knew, we wouldn't need to do this part."

"Let me see it all, then." He didn't speak again as I laid out eight more cards, one column to the left and the other to the right of the central cross. When I was done, he spent two or three minutes studying the cards. "I don't recognize the symbolism," he admitted.

I offered him a scrap of truth. "I inherited that part, but the cards are my addition." I preferred-- and still prefer-- letting the cards represent the deaths that my mother's predictions would have required.

I'd have stabbed and drowned and burned and devoured as many humans as required for Corwin's reading if I'd had to, but, as I said, none of that is particularly enjoyable. I'll shovel shit if I have to or walk on a carpet of shattered glass. It's a question of grace and efficiency.

"Is it good or is it bad?" He didn't sound as if he really wanted to know.

I frowned at the cards. "It's a lot of work," I told him. "Three steps forward and two steps back until you finally get there."

"I'd rather not," he said.

"So would I. I don't think you'll be the only one inconvenienced."

"Tell me."

"The Three of Swords covers you," I said. "You need to stop chasing romance and adrenaline. You need to settle and accept hard work in all its tedium."

He made a sound that told me that he understood and that he rejected the idea.

"Crossing you is the Seven of Swords. Deception and fraud that leave you feeling betrayed."

His lips twitched. "I bought you dinner."

I had to stifle a laugh. "I didn't ask it of you. The kindness left me... better disposed toward you, but I wasn't testing your moral character." I knew his moral character. If we'd been in a fairy tale, he would never be the child who went home with the blessing instead of the curse.

I don't think that any universe ever gave Corwin, son of Oberon, that sort of blessing. I suppose that's why he refused our father's dying gift. He knew that Oberon was offering poison.

Random will be well enough. The horn of a Unicorn purifies. Random got the throne without Oberon's bullshit expectations.

I touched the card at the bottom of the central cross. "The Ten of Wands. The root of your situation is burdens piled upon you. Burdens you see as power and advantage even as they smother you."

"Looks more like beating me to death," he said.

"Your words, not mine. Behind you is the Five of Cups. That's the immediate past." I was fairly sure that it was actually the soon to be immediate past. "Despair. Broken trust. Disappointment. Confusion. Deeply felt mental and emotional conflict. What remains will flower, but it won't be the blossom you expected."

"I was quite contented before I met you," he said dryly.

"I know." I could give him that much. "But this would likely have killed you if I'd let you walk away." I hesitated over the next card, not because I didn't understand it so much as because I couldn't explain it to him. "Above you-- normally I'd say 'limiting your options'-- is the Page of Wands. The card represents a person with words to bridge the gap between Swords and... other things. I suspect the Swords are your language. You need a translator."

"You're speaking Thari," he said very softly. "That tells me more than your words do."

I hadn't noticed the transition from Italian to Thari, but I supposed that it made some sense. "You're more likely to understand that language of power than the tongue my mother spoke."

He didn't say anything further.

I went on to the next card. "The Eight of Pentacles is your immediate future. Apprenticeship with all of its struggles and humiliations. You'll need to pay attention, be obedient, and work very, very hard."

"And if I don't?" His voice told me that he expected to have to fight and that he looked forward to it.

"We are in my place of power." I didn't want to have to use that. I needed him to mature rather than rot. "Right column or left?"

"Is there a difference?"

"They're distorted reflections reality. The pairs reflect the same reality, but I can't tell you what mirrors or lenses you're using."

"Because you can't say or because you don't know?"

"I could guess," I admitted, "and I could tell you my guesses. Being right for me wouldn't mean I was right for you."

"There's no way this ends well."

"If there's no way at all," I said tartly, "then I'm wasting my time. I might as well see what happens if I shred all of my Shadows myself. I'm not enthusiastic about anything in that direction."

He almost smiled. "Left then right."

"These cards--" I pressed a finger into the bottom card of each column. "--represent you and your interactions with your present situation. On the left, we have the Knight of Wands reversed. Unwillingness to make the effort required to challenge the status quo. You enjoy your advantages and all of the opportunities you have to indulge-- good food, good sex, good fights, good poetry. Why risk any of it?"

He nodded. "Yes. That seems like an excellent question." He raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to tell me why?"

It would all have been simpler if I'd had any idea why. Corwin was Corwin was Corwin. If he hadn't walked into my Shadow, I'd never have thought that he was of any more importance than my other siblings.

You'd probably be King in Amber if Corwin had detoured around my realm.

"On the right, we have the Eight of Cups. That is an acceptance of risk and challenge and a journey deeper into yourself. You're past the point of no return, and you'll have to break with the past in order to keep moving."

"That sounds like a threat."

"You'll know when I'm threatening you," I told him firmly. "I've only asked you to sit and pay attention." I touched the next cards in each column. "These are the people around you and how they and their interests affect your situation. On the left, we have the Four of Pentacles reversed. Extravagance to the point of wastefulness. Flaunting superiority of skills, powers, possessions. Sound familiar?"

He looked offended. He must have understood that he wasn't getting a pass simply because the card represented the people around him.

"In the right column, we have the Page of Pentacles which represents increasing powers-- scholarship, diplomacy, magic, trade. It's a challenge to seek training and to work hard at becoming better."

"So either we're all preening assholes or we're all diligent students?" He was definitely offended, and for the first time since the reading started, I felt Grayswandir as hungry threat.

I hoped that my brother hadn't learned everything that he could do with one of the Four Swords in his possession. "The categories are not mutually exclusive. The next pair are hopes and fears. I suspect you won't be surprised by what's there.

"On the left is the Seven of Wands reversed. Paranoia and instability. The individual dare not trust the group, and the group would be wise not to trust the individual."

"That's reality," he said.

"Is it?" I didn't try to keep pity out of my voice. "I think that is a reality I would prefer to... leave behind."

"Florimel," he said. He sounded completely certain.

I let myself appear as the woman he knew. "That won't help you," I told him. "This is a pivot that rests entirely on who you decide to be." I didn't look at him, only at the card on the right. "The Six of Swords reversed is stasis, frustration. You're caught, frozen, with no chance of victory and no chance of defeat. You know that you need something to shatter the situation."

"I'd rather not," he said.

I thought I heard desperation there. "The door is that way."

"And where does it lead?"

Some of our siblings wouldn't have thought to ask. I hadn't expected Corwin to.

"Through," I told him truthfully. "It will take time, but you have that. All of us do. You will know yourself when you reach the other side. I can't give you more than the opportunity, and I can't promise that you will like yourself much after."

I waited for him to stand and to stride through the door. For several minutes, neither of us spoke.

"There are two more cards," he said at last. "You asked me to stay until the reading was done."

"I asked that," I replied. "You are not required to grant it."

The sound he made in response wasn't exactly laughter. "I might as well finish my wine. You were right; it is very much to my taste." He poured more. "Tell me the ending."

"Not the ending. Well, not necessarily the ending." I closed my eyes for a moment. "And I would be happy to give you a meal and a bed for the night before you cross that threshold."

"Will that make the journey easier?"

I suspect he heard the answer in my silence. "The last two cards are influences not shown elsewhere in the reading. Sometimes, they're outcomes. In this case..." I sighed. "On the left, the Seven of Cups reversed represents grounding of perceptions in reality rather than in wishes. It represents letting go of selfishness and arrogance in favor of cooperation." I made myself turn and look directly at him. "You won't be King in Amber because you won't want to be King in Amber."

His upper lip curled in something that might have been a sneer or might have been a snarl.

"The last card," I said. "The Hermit reversed also shows that you will never be King in Amber. You will play at hero and poet and prince, but you'll never get further than you are now because there's nothing at all underneath those masks."

"I am the Hero and the Poet and a Prince," he told me.

"You are _a_ poet, brother. You've worked hard at that. No one get to be _the_ Poet. Shadow is too vast for that." I hoped that he would accept that because the poetry was the thing he could actually keep.

The poetry was real.

"Why does the Seven of Cups reversed cap the column where I do nothing right?" he asked. "And does the Hermit reversed fit with the column where I'm diligent and obedient to your dictates?"

He was right, but that was the way the cards had fallen.

I considered that but could make no sense of it. 

In that moment, I had no idea how true it would be. Corwin would work and grow and then walk the Pattern which would return him to its image so that he'd have to go through the other column to achieve the necessary outcome.

Possibly, it would have been clearer if I'd used Death for my oracle. Possibly not. The angry dead are apt to twist the truth for the ugliest outcome.

"I do not know," I admitted at last. "I only know that, if you do not go through, my realm will die, and the Pattern will break." I pushed myself to my feet. "Nothing beyond that door will kill you or permanently harm your body. I dare not give you choice, but I can promise you that safety."

He tarried for a meal and an opportunity to record his most recent poems. I still have them. I was never sure how to explain them after he returned. I suppose I should simply leave them in his room at the Castle.

They're too good to burn, but if he doesn't remember, there's probably a reason he shouldn't remember.

I don't know what he found when he went through the door and down the stairs. Each person's journey is unique and private. The plague and the amnesia... I don't know if they were part of his road or if he chose them after because he could not bear himself as he was.

He was no longer Corwin when I found him again.

I stayed, and I watched without interfering. I didn't want to precipitate disaster by forcing him to remember, and he was... physically well. Over the decades, adversity taught him prudence. Powerlessness taught him how to do without and how to share the never-quite-enough with everyone who needed it.

The Prince of Amber might have understood those things, intellectually. Your father understands them from having needed them to survive and from having cared deeply about people most of the family would consider unimportant.

I do not think it was time wasted. I do not think he considers it time wasted.

At any rate, Merlin, you have two doors, one through and one out. You may return to this place at any time and still have both doors. I don't know what you'll find in yourself if you go through. It may hurt beyond imagining, but you will be forged true by it.

The choice is yours.


	2. The Tarot Reading (photo heavy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All images are from the Sacred Rose tarot deck with photography by me and my phone.
> 
> For various reasons, I've always associated this deck with Amber.

**Significator:** Four of Swords

**Covering:** Three of Swords reversed  
 **Crossing:** Seven of Swords

**Central cross:**

**Below:** Ten of Wands

**Behind:** Five of Cups

**Above:** Page of Wands

**Ahead:** Eight of Pentacles

**Left Column:** (bottom to top) Knight of Wands reversed; Four of Pentacles reversed; Seven of Wands reversed; Seven of Cups reversed

**Right Column:** (bottom to top) Eight of Cups; Page of Pentacles; Six of Swords reversed; The Hermit reversed

**Self Pair:** The Eight of Cups and the Knight of Wands reversed

**Other People Pair:** The Page of Pentacles and the Four of Pentacles reversed

**Hopes and Fears Pair:** The Six of Swords reversed and the Seven of Wands reversed

**Extra Factor/Outcome Pair:** The Hermit reversed and the Seven of Cups reversed


End file.
